• Question: How can people people talk and be able to move?

    Asked by anon-238977 to James, Hannah, Chris, binuraj, Alice on 18 Mar 2020.
    • Photo: Hannah Blyth

      Hannah Blyth answered on 18 Mar 2020:

      You know what, I hadn’t really thought about this before! But there are definitely people who struggle to walk and talk… and people on TV programs and films do it a lot… I guess different parts of the brain are involved and walking is a thing many of us are able to do from quite a young age. Maybe it is a learned thing?

    • Photo: Binuraj Menon

      Binuraj Menon answered on 18 Mar 2020:

      Hi Jabari,

      I have no definite answer for this. My understanding is that even though we can perform multi-tasking like this (like talking and walking at the same time) the efficiency or the focus goes down and we in fact take more time to complete the task and there is a high chance to make errors. Both walking and talking are controlled by same part in our brain, so does it show that we are actually not able enough to do this multitasking ?

    • Photo: Chris Carlton

      Chris Carlton answered on 24 Mar 2020:

      My understanding is that there are two elements to this – one is the physical way in which are muscles and joints work which allow us to move and our tongue allows us to talk. There is also the physical nature of the way the brain communicates with the body to send these signals.

      On the other hand, the issue is also psychological and there are occasions when there are no physical limitations but psychological ones prevent movement or speech.

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